The Red Badge of Courage

An 18 year old Union soldier named Henry Fleming awaits the call to his first taste of battle. There on the battlefield, all the glory and romance of warfare is gone, and the only things that remain are self-doubt and a deep, dark fear. One of the first great realist depictions of warfare, Stephen Crane's classic novel presents the deeply personal psychological struggles of an individual soldier. Through Henry's eyes, the American Civil War appears not as a nation at war with itself, but as one man's battle between honor and survival.